Digital Publishing Glossary

Ad Server“Ad server” is short for Advertisement Server. It is software that is used to store and manage advertisements that appear on a web page.

APIAPI is short for Application Programming Interface. Most software applications use APIs to open up access to their functionality and data to other applications. You can think if an API as a language thatsoftware applications use to communicate with one another.

AppShort for "application." In social terms, an app may be a mobile or web-based app that enables social functions, e.g. Facebook's mobile app for iPhone.

BandwidthBandwidth is a measurement of the amount of data that can travel in and out of your web servers.It is also used to describe the capacity of data that flows from your internet provider to your home or office.

BlogA web log where individuals or companies post content, which is published in reverse chronological order and typically open to user comments.

BloggerName for the person who is responsible for writing a blog.

Bounce rate“Bounce rate” is the percentage of time that a visitor navigates away or “bounces” from your page. If the bounce rate is high, it usually means that the visitor didn’t find what they’re looking for so they left.

CachingCaching refers to technology that stores pre-processed content and data in a place that is easy to access for web servers so that pages can load very fast, even if they have a lot of content and functionality.

CDNCDN is short for Content Delivery Network. CDNs are also sometimes referred to as “Edge Networks”. The goal of a CDN is to speed up websites by making copies of the content in multiple geographic areas so that all users access content from a location that is close to them.

CloudThe terms “cloud” and ”the cloud” refer to software that is available over the internet, rather than by installing it on a specific machine. Cloud software is usually sold on a subscription basis rather than as a one-time fee.

CMSCMS is short for Content Management System. A CMS is essentially a database that stores text, image and video content that can be published to a website and other digital channels.

CommentA message left by a user on a Publisher's blog, Facebook page, or other social platform.

Community ManagerA job role where the employee engages with users of an online community, such as a forum, Facebook fan page, or comments on a blog. The Community Manager usually answers questions, promotes the community, and may also perform moderation duties.

Content Marketing
“Content marketing” is the discipline of creating original content to draw attention to a product or service, rather than traditional advertising.

Content Merchandising“Content Merchandising” is the process of displaying your content in different ways to bring specific content into the view of the user. This can be done with images, lists, navigation, etc.

CPCCPC is short for Cost Per Click. CPC usually refers to the costs associated with a website user clicking on an advertisement.

CPMCPM is short for Cost Per Thousand. A CPM is usually used in the context of online advertising and it means the total cost of an ad per one thousand ‘impressions’ or views.

DFPDFP is short for ‘DoubleClick for Publishers’ which is a popular advertisement server that is owned and operated by Google.DFP for Small Business is a free version for sites with under 1,000,000 page views.

EmbeddingPosting photos or video content within social media that is hosted by another network, i.e. YouTube.

EngagementA desired interaction by a user to a brand. This could be "likes" on a Facebook fan page, retweets of a tweet sent by a brand, comments on a blog, or time spent on a social game.

Follow FridayA trend on Twitter each Friday, denoted by the hashtag #FF. People on Twitter use this to recommend following a certain user.

The Fold“The fold” is the point on a web page below the bottom of the screen. Above the fold means that content is in view for the user. Below the fold means content is out of view until the user scrolls down.

ForumsThreaded topical discussions where users can leave comments and react to other people's comments. Unlike pure blog comments, the topic of a particular forum thread is often started by another forum user, not a Publisher.

FriendsThe network of people an individual user is connected with on Facebook.

GamificationApplying gaming principles to non-games. For example, Nike encourages its consumers to track their runs and share that data to Facebook. This action earns points for the consumer, which they can redeem for Nike product.

HashtagUse of the hash or pound symbol # used in front of a tag or keyword. Often used on Twitter to help people find discussion on the same topic.

HeatmapA heatmap is a visual indication of where mouse clicks or eyeballs congregate on a page, usually illustrated with colors.User experience designers use heatmaps to see if their design lines up with a user’s expectations and behavior.

HTML5HTML5 is the latest version of the Hypertext Markup Language which is the code behind every web page.Version 5 is designed to handle more interactive features that allow developers to code web pages that behave more like applications.

InfluencersA person or group of people who have a strong influential presence on social media and who are often targeted by marketers as social media brand advocates.

Information Architecture or IA An Information Architecture is like a blueprint for a website. It describes the layout and functionality of how a website will look and behave.

Instant Messaging (IM)Person-to-person electronic chat enabled through a social platform, like MSN or Skype. These clients also enable video messaging.

KPIKey Performance Indicator. Used to determine benchmarks for social media strategy success or failure.

Link JuiceEach link that points to your site carries “link juice” that helps boost the rank and authority of your page. The amount of link juice that is sent to your site depends on the rank and authority of the page on the site that links to your page.

Link BuildingA key tenet of Search Engine Optimization, link building is the process of building links from other sites to yours. Sites with higher rank and authority provide links with more link juice which will do more to help improve the rank and authority of your site.

Long Tail KeywordsLong tail keywords are two or more words that narrow a search focus down to a specific thing.For example, a long tail variation of the search term “fishing” would be “fly fishing in Minnesota”. Finding long tail keywords that make sense for you and adding them to your content is a great way to increase traffic from search engines.

MashupMerging of two or more pieces of content together to create a new piece of media.

MemeA piece of media, often a photo and copy together, that inspire copycat media which often go viral.

Meta DescriptionsThe meta description is a bit of hidden text on each web page that describes the page to search engines. It is also returned as the text under the link in search results. It’s important to keep the meta description under 150 characters so that it doesn’t get cut off in search results.

ModerationThe act of selecting media files for publication or not, based on rules and guidelines set out by the Publisher. Content can be pre-moderated, meaning they're reviewed before they're published, or post-moderated, meaning the media is published immediately after a user posts it, but a moderator may take the media down later if they find it violates their rules. Moderation can be done by people or by software.

Page TitlesThe “page title” is the text on a web page that shows up in the browser tab and is returned as the link in search results. It is very important to keep page titles under 65 characters so that they don’t get cut off in search results.It’s also a good practice to put the keywords you want to rank for in the title. More on SEO for CMS.

Real Time Search
Search engine results which include media that is being generated on social networks at the point in time that the search was conducted.

RetweetA retweet is when someone forwards your tweet on Twitter to their followers.

Reputation MonitoringAnalysis of social media conversations on a particular topic or brand which reveals the overall sentiment that users are expressing about that topic or brand.

SEOSEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the discipline of helping websites rank better on search engines.

SentimentA measure to determine users' emotional relationship to a social
media post or social media presence. Defined further as positive,
negative or neutral.

Social BookmarkingA means for social media users to broadly share web URLs and content under a username, typically found via a tag (see tag).

Social GameAn interactive game which is either played with other people in a social space and/or highly encourages sharing of game content into social spaces. E.g. Farmville.

Social MediaContent, such as photos, videos or stories, that are shared.

Social Media Platform Technologies which enable social networks, and tying services into those social networks. E.g. Facebook's Open Graph, Twitter's API.

Social MetricA service created to facilitate the publication, sharing and discussion of social media. E.g. Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Social NetworkA service created to facilitate the publication, sharing and discussion of social media. E.g. Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

SoMoLo
Stands for, "social, mobile, local." Describes the trend that consumers are increasingly using local services on mobile devices, which have socially enabled services.

SSLSSL is short for Secure Socket Layer. It is an Internet communication protocol that ensures that data transmitted between a web browser and a web server cannot be intercepted and accessed.

Status Short content a user posts on social media. Also called Status Update.

Tag A short word or words used to describe a piece of content. E.g. a photo of the movie poster for Moneyball may be tagged with words like, "movie", "baseball", "Brad Pitt".

Time On Page“Time on page” is the amount of time a website visitor spends on a specific page. If this goes higher, it indicates that engagement on the page and site is high. A longer time on page is typically more attractive to advertisers because the visitor sees their ad longer.

Trending A piece of content or a topic that a large number of people are talking about, in real time, on social networks right now. Trending topics are often seen on Twitter, but people use this term on other social networks as well-- there is even an online show called, "What's Trending" which discusses what has been trending that day.

Troll A term for users who post off-topic or offensive topics on a social media platform, often in violation of social media guidelines/agreements.

Tweeps Mashup of the words, "Twitter" and "people" to describe people using Twitter.

TweetsVerb used to describe a message that is up to 140 characters long, that a user posts through their Twitter account.

UGCUGC is short for User Generated Content. This refers to content that is submitted to a brand or publication site by end users. Simple examples include comments and ratings. More sophisticated examples would be photos or videos that are submitted by end users and moderated before being published to a live site.

Unique Visitor
A term used in Web Analytics meaning a device that accessed your website. The same individual person can have multiple unique visitor entries if they visit your site from multiple devices like their computer and smartphone. This metric tells you roughly how many people come to your site in a given time period.

URLURL is short for Universal Resource Locator. It is the technical term for a web link.

Video Messaging A communications tool that facilities person to person, or group video based chat that let people hear one another, or sometimes both hear and see one another. E.g. Google+ Hangouts, Skype.

ViralUsed to describe media that becomes popular through widespread sharing

WCMWCM is short for Web Content Management. It is a subset of content management that is focused specifically on authoring and publishing content for a public website.

Unbound Media is about the strategies, tools and tactics that connect the Unbound Audience with Unbound Content. Through research, experience sharing and inspiration, this blog is designed to offer smart and innovative ideas to help you navigate a world where people and media are boundless.